Rod Davis
Horses for courses
‘It depends…’ I used to hate it when Marco [Mercuriali] would start the answer to one of my racing rule questions with ‘it depends’. I just wanted an answer – a short one would be nice! But today, if someone were to ask me for some tips on how to coach, I would be tempted to start with ‘it depends…’
It depends on who you’re coaching, how much time you have, what the priorities are or what is going to make the greatest impact and most improve the sailor or team. There is no one right coaching formula. It changes like the wind – like adjusting your sails, you change the coaching formula just as much.
But there are some guidelines, principles really, that sit over the top of all the other stuff: 1) Get the best out of both the individuals and the team. 2) Make a plan of what will have the greatest impact for the team, and stick to it.
Coaches are a bit of a jack of all trades – everything from sail shapes to crew work, from making sense of instrument data to roll tacking, racing rules to mental preparation. I can explain it like this: you’re either teaching maths or art.
Maths is sail shapes, how much rake in the mast, target speeds, boat data – everything that can be quantified through numbers is the maths side. People love numbers because numbers feel like facts. (72 per cent of numbers are made up, although in Trump’s case 92 per cent). Numbers are clear to understand, black and white. Art, art is art… open to interpretation. Not easy to define, there is no equation that gives you an undisputed result. It’s the feel of sailing, the best way to learn is by doing it, little and often, greatly helped by what I call real-time coaching. We will get into that later. The maths and art of coaching must be in balance with the two guidelines of coaching.
A racing sail boat/team’s performance depends on getting four
basic things right: speed, starting, tactics and no screw-ups, in other words crew work. Speed is a package of boat, sails and the crew’s ability to get the most out of them. If you’re not fast or at least as fast, you have a lot on to stand on the podium at the end of the regatta. Speed is 60 per cent maths, 40 per cent art.
Starts, as in consistently good starts. They don’t have to be all 24 SEAHORSE
blinders, but you do have to be able to sail off the starting line so you can use your speed and not be forced to tack to find clear wind… 35 per cent maths, 65 per cent art.
Tactics – not a lot of point in investing hours and hours on tactics if we don’t have the speed and starting sorted out. Because without S&S you don’t decide where you go, the guys with it are already there. When we get to tactics it’s 41 per cent maths, 59 per cent art! No screw-ups with crew work, like not dropping the big balloon- like sail in the water and wrapping it around your keel. Crew work needs to be competent with good gybes and no major mistakes. It’s not that we can carry the gennaker to the last moment when rounding the mark, it’s that we never drop it in the water. Ever. That is more important than the perfect drop. It all comes down to risk/return, the maths of a last-second drop. Risk = 150m and a $10,000 sail vs possible return = 3m.
I have a saying that crews hate, but it goes like this, ‘crew work does not win yacht races but it can certainly lose them’. Thus the ‘no screw-up’ policy first.
Coaches use a variety of different tools to teach, but they basically fall into art or maths tools.
PRIMARY MATHS TOOLS Us and them still shots, taken from both on and off the boat, tend to be a good way of pointing out specific differences in set-ups. Performance data from the boat. Put up graphs to show historical and theoretical data alongside each other. 360° video taken onboard the raceboat. Good for crew work and confirming set-ups as you can ‘look around’ and see the traveller and jib lead positions and the boat’s instruments at the same time.
PRIMARY ART TOOLS Video from the coach boat and, even better, side-by-side ‘us and them’ video for tacking or gybing. Drone footage. The look from above is great for mark roundings and starting development. This one can be both maths and art. Real-time coaching. Coaching in the moment with radios, or coming over and talking to the crew, is much better for learning than trying to recreate the event hours later in the meeting. Mental side. All art! Lots of tricks of the trade here, thousands really, but the overriding part is getting the best out of your players
MAX RANCHI
CHRISTOPHE FAVREAU/DPPI
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